TikTok deleted about 29,000 coronavirus-related videos

TikTok has removed about 29,000 coronavirus-related videos that broke its rules in Europe alone since the beginning of this year.

The video-sharing app says it does not permit misinformation that could affect an individual’s health or public safety.

It said about 3,000 of them contained medical misinformation and described the numbers as “low-level”.

The number of coronavirus-themed videos breaking the rules has fallen every month, since a peak in March, it said.

On 9 July, the business published its latest transparency report, in which it said 49 million videos had been removed between July and December 2019.

About a quarter of those were deleted for containing adult nudity or sexual activity.

The business said it was “difficult to measure with absolute certainty” how many of this year’s videos contained coronavirus misinformation.

But it said it had added a coronavirus information banner to posts containing words, hashtags or music relating to Covid-19.

It described the numbers as “low-level”.

TikTok said it had applied the banner to seven million videos in Europe since the beginning of 2020 – 700,000 of those by UK creators.

It added that its coronavirus information page had been viewed more than 52 million times across the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

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